


Old Beginnings

by spoke



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-21
Updated: 2010-07-21
Packaged: 2017-10-10 17:17:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,405
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/102161
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spoke/pseuds/spoke
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Creative title is creative, yes? :P</p><p>I wrote most of this ages ago, and finished it earlier this month. I'm not sure how well the pieces mesh, really, but I was tired of it sitting in the folder and never posted.</p></blockquote>





	Old Beginnings

The slow motion of the windshield wipers and the soft, distant hum of the road might have lulled him into a dangerous sleep if he hadn't been so irritated. He had avoided the highest roads, but it was deep enough into winter that they were all going to be dangerously slick.

He had the damned snow tires on. There was that much of comfort, and he was likely to get off the mountain and onto more reliable roads before nightfall. It didn't count for much against his temper, knowing he'd left the peaceful solitude of his home to go into town for some damned mess his students had created. He had told them to leave it alone until after the holidays, and he was fairly certain he'd secured everything related to their experiments. So how had his students managed to create whatever little disaster had the chancellor screaming bloody murder at him over the phone?

Beneath those worries were other questions, cold and eager and amoral. The questions of a dead man, which he tried to suppress because it was all too easy to be consumed by them. He would see soon enough.

He started to feel a little calmer when the trees began to thin out around him, revealing the sides of the roads and the occasional rocky outcrop. Halfway there, he thought; and then 'who is that by the road?'

In the moment the figure raised its hand, two thoughts crystallized in his mind - the first a twisting sense of deja vu he hadn't felt since he was a teenager, and the second a panicked realization that whomever this was didn't know that he remembered.

A slab of rock that surely hadn't moved since it was deposited by a glacier ages ago slammed into his car, and that was all the identification he needed, or had time to think about. He heard himself cursing at a distance as the car spun off the road and began sliding down the valley. Everything outside the car became a whirling blur as it sped up, and a sense of panic bit into him as he clutched at the brake and the wheel. He couldn't maneuver the damned thing, but he managed to hit the emergency brake and it slowed...

Which of course was when it hit a tree. He stared at it as his mind screamed at him for wasting crucial seconds, and blinked down at the airbag which had failed to go off. He was fumbling with the seat belt when he heard the soft crackling of the fire. His head snapped up, his eyes narrowed and he could hear himself snarl something he didn't quite understand as he flung his left hand towards the engine in sharp wave - and the softer sounds of fire vanished in a hiss and nearly musical cracking as the windshield iced over.

There was some sort of irony, he was sure, in the way knowing he was not about to blow up had him moving faster than the prospect of a second death by fire had. But he had to be certain that he had done magic, that he wasn't suffering some hallucination brought on by a blow to the head - and half falling out of the car due to a sudden dizziness only made the second option seem more likely. He could hear Lexeaus-whomever calling to him as he forced himself up, stumbling to the engine with the intention of opening the hood - but the rough sheet of ice covering the cracked remains of it answered the question.

He was staring at it numbly, eyes tracing the extent of the ice and wondering what damage lay underneath it, when he felt a hand on his shoulder turning him. A deep voice softened by concern and perhaps a touch of embarrassment greeted him as he looked up into brown eyes. "Vexen?"

"You nearly killed me." he hears himself say, his voice unexpectedly quiet. Then louder, an old and painfully familiar temper rising in the silence, "You nearly killed me! What did you think you were doing, you damned idiot! You" and he tried to stop himself, he really did, but flinching when he saw that frown had been an involuntary reflex for Vexen and Even both. No doubt it was permanently ingrained by now.

"I was stopping the car, actually."

" -what?" He stared, feeling his temper ebb at the calm tones. Oh, but damn Aeleus _and_ Lexeaus and this one, with their inscrutable expressions. Trying to outstare the man was like trying to outstare a test tube. He stopped a moment, breathing deeply, letting the anger settle - and smirking slightly at the surprise in the other man's eyes. "You couldn't have made a road block ahead of me?"

"That was my intention. You were moving faster than I'd thought, however." The other man sighed as the frown slid off his features, and the suspicious little sparkle in his eyes brightened. "You do realize you haven't even told me your name yet. I suppose it would be too much to expect you to ask mine?"

He felt himself starting to flinch away from that steady stare that was and was not Lexeaus's, and refused. "I'm Vincent. And you are?"

There it was again. A definite glint of amusement. "John. Can I offer you a lift? You won't be getting anywhere in that."

Raised eyebrows were the only response to his glare. Eventually he forced out, in what he thought was a reasonably calm tone, "Yes. Thank you."

Halfway up the slope he asked, "What do you do for a living?"

Whatever response he had expected, it was not laughter that echoed through the snow bound hills and had not yet faded when he began to speak. "Photography. Landscapes and wildlife for the most part, although I do commissions sometimes - art, architecture. Events when I was younger."

The tone of his voice left no doubt what he thought of that last, and Vincent couldn't help a chuckle at the incongruous image of Lexeaus, Organization coat and all, waiting for people to stay in place for a picture.

* * *

One surprisingly short and over-heated ride later, Vincent slipped out of Lexeaus's monster of a car and stretched. No amount of complaining had convinced him to turn down the heat; it was like traveling in a small sauna.

"Just because you have no tolerance for warmth, Vincent, doesn't mean the rest of us are willing to freeze to keep you happy."

"I have a perfectly normal tolerance for warmth now, thank you. And nobody ever froze to keep me happy!" He brushed past the front hallway with a precursory kick of his boots, noticing that whatever muck they might have picked up on the walk had chiefly been lost in John's car.

A short glance and a smirk should have been sufficient answer, but no, John had to insist on the pun. "I would say Nobody always froze to keep you happy, actually. And it wasn't any fun listening to Zexion complain about the effect of condensation on books, trust me."

"He actually complained about that? What books, his precious library was nowhere near my quarters _or_ the labs!"

"But it used to be, until I realized that you cared more for your experiments than for literature."

The voice was as familiar/unfamiliar as John's, but the _tone_ of it - that was exactly and entirely Ienzo. _Zexion._ Two lifetimes' worth of arguments and threats and frustration cracked the ground out from underneath Vincent's feet, and he whirled away from John with a snarl on his face. "I certainly didn't ask for you to place your precious library next to the labs, Zexion. You would have been just as welcome to have them _upstairs._" His only response to the glare of the man sitting behind the table was to smirk.

Brown eyes narrowed sharply. "That tired old insinuation is just as boring _now_ as it was then, Vexen. Perhaps you'd care to come up with something new by way of an insult?"

"I am _not_ Vexen!" he shouted, and felt a shock of cold against the hand that slammed into the table in front of him. A part of his mind was operating in a detached way that seemed perverse given the subject of the argument, noting that he didn't actually remember crossing the rest of the room.

Equally of note was the fact that of all of them, this young man looked the least like who he had been. He looked older, for a beginning, and the dark black hair was cut short and well clear of his brown eyes. "Nor am I Zexion."

They stared at each other, both glaring until John shut the door with perhaps a touch more force than was necessary. Vincent blinked in the rush of air and looked away, muttering. "I'm Vincent, now."

Not-Zexion laughed a little too sharply as he returned his attention to his book. "That must be uncomfortable."

"Do you think it has anything to do with his temper?" John rumbled as he crossed the room to take a book off the table.

"I do _not_ have a temper, John. Near death experiences are not known for triggering onslaughts of emotional stability."

The man's only response was a slight shrug as he changed direction. "I thought you had calmed down on the drive here."

"Yes, a little, and then I was antagonized as soon as I entered the house!"

Zexion didn't bother to look up from his book this time. "Not as soon as you entered the house, surely. I don't recall going out into the hallway."

"You are perfectly well aware of what I meant, Zexion. And what is this, as if you're ganging up on Vexen again?!"

Zexion smirked. "We didn't gang up on you, Vincent. We defended ourselves from your overly aggressive behavior in the absence of Xigbar to foist you off on."

A small growth of ice cracked outward from his hand and lingered for a moment before the heat melted it away. "You don't trust me."

"We don't know you yet." John countered, looking up from his book. "We do know that _we_ have changed, although to how significant a degree..." he trailed off, frowning at the two of them as if they were somehow a disappointment before returning to the book.

Vincent noticed that he was glaring at the man in a way that felt like Vexen, and turned his back on them both. Because the truth was, they had a point. They were all of them - well, everyone he had met so far - eerily similar to where they had been. He knew he wasn't Vexen; he knew he did not feel the fear and confusion that had plagued his last life almost from the moment of awakening, born out of Even's unshakeable belief that they were doing everything right. But they didn't know any of that. All they knew was they'd found the guy who used to be Vexen and who was still picking fights as if there had been no change. He took a deep breath, and turned around.

"What are you planning?"

"Plan?" Zexion's lips quirked again. "Who said there was a plan?"

Vincent felt his own smirk rising. "The man I remember could no more have existed without his plans than a spider could exist without a web. How do you expect me to believe you're keeping your mind occupied if not by plotting something?"

"Stay then, and find out." he offered, and pushed the cup back towards Vincent.

Unable to decide whether he should be scowling or smirking, he took the cup as a way out and sat down to drink. "You do realize you still haven't had the courtesy to tell me your new name."

He hadn't been expecting that grimace. "It's Alexander, actually."

Anagramming the inevitable nickname took all of a second, at which point he couldn't have stopped himself laughing. "And you called my name uncomfortable. It's practically the same as the man who murdered me!"

"As well as myself. Well. Technically it was a combination of Riku weakening me and your Replica finishing me off," he continued lightly, "but with Axel standing behind it _egging it on_..." he trailed off with a grimace, staring at Vincent very much as if he were seeing Vexen.

There was nothing in his memories to account for this behavior on the Replica's part... though he hadn't tried very hard to remember that particular line of research. It had been meant as a solution for a problem he no longer had, after all. "Why?"

"Why was it killing him or why did Axel want it to?" John asked slowly.

"Both. And where were you while this was happening?"

At no point in their meeting had John looked more like Lexaeus. "Already dead. Not by Axel's hand." he shook his head, a touch of amusement breaking the illusion. "Riku didn't just smell like Xemnas, he was still a host to his Heartless."

"So you defeated him..." Vincent asked, wanting to hear Lexaeus confirm his suspicion.

"It came out to defend its host."

"Intriguing. What about when you faced him, Z - Alexander? You said it was Riku who weakened you?" Even as he asked, he noticed that Alexander was frowning uncomfortably, and it looked as if -

"What you doing now, Vincent?" he asked, in poisonously pleasant tones.

\- he were about to change the subject. A little heavy-handed, as usual, but it worked all the same. For now, at any rate - he would return to the subject later. "I'm a professor, actually. It affords me access to materials that might otherwise be a little difficult to come by." He smiled darkly at the look in Alexander's eyes - envy was the most pleasant emotion present in them. "Speaking of which, I should call work - the students managed to create some kind of a disaster in spite of my precautions. Perhaps you'd care to accompany me to the university tomorrow?"

Some of the darkness slid out of Alexander's eyes as he nodded slowly. "The phone is in the hallway, then."

John held the door open as he stalked towards it, some of his previous irritation returning. As he passed, running through his list of probable suspects, he heard John's low rumble of, "You're welcome to spend the night, of course."

Naturally. Did they think he was going to walk home?

**Author's Note:**

> Creative title is creative, yes? :P
> 
> I wrote most of this ages ago, and finished it earlier this month. I'm not sure how well the pieces mesh, really, but I was tired of it sitting in the folder and never posted.


End file.
